Ebay Allows Fakes If It's "An Ashton Coin"?

No, ebay does not allow this. But don't forget, with over 700,000 US coins listed, they can't police them all at the time of listing; it's up to us to report this stuff.

Every ebay auction has a "Report Item" link.

If you click that, there will be three boxes.

First box is Report Category: select "Prohibited and restricted items".

Second box is Reason For Report: select "Stamps, Currency and Coins".

Third box is Detailed Reason: select "Replica Coins, Replica Paper Money, and Replica Stamps" and the form will automatically add wording to the effect that it is an unmarked copy.

Then just click "Send Report". Quick and easy.

But this coin is listed on ebay UK. Have they changed their policy now also?

Hadn't realized it was a UK listing. And no, ebay doesn't apply these rules across the board because their differing host countries have differing laws in that regard.

The original poster got it right, these are supposed to be marked - with incised lettering "COPY" or similar. Stating that it's a copy in the text of the auction doesn't comply with the Hobby Protection Act.

Anyway, think about it. If a counterfeiter says "these bills are counterfeit", can he sell counterfeit $100 bills, no problem? Of course not, and it's because he knows, or should reasonably be expected to know, that the next time those bills change hands, it might be a criminal act of deception. And that's a basic argument clearly settled long ago in court.

Same thing applies with counterfeit coins or tokens. That's what they are, illegal counterfeits.

The seller is in the UK but he sells worldwide and the auction link goes to ebay.com, not ebay.uk. They are clearly being offered not just in violation of ebay's rules, but illegally.

I'd suggest a Google search for Ashton counterfeits to see just how deceptive these fakes are, and think where our hobby is headed if these things are an any way legal.

When ebay ignored sellers like "lhasania", just to give one example, he was able to flood the marketplace with many thousands of fake Trade dollars, in massive auctions, each auction offering 50 fakes, and 10 lots per auction (so each listing provided another 500 fakes to the flood coming from China) and he had multiple auctions simultaneously for YEARS. His price was just $2 per coin, and he stated that they were fakes.

Those sales should've never been allowed!

So, what happened next? Sellers discovered the easy profits, reinvested in better fakes, and now we have them using genuine silver dollars as blanks to strike sophisticated counterfeits. If they had been smacked down early in the game, there wouldn't be the terrible flood of deceptive fakes we see now.

And we are in the front lines. If you don't help to clean up the hobby when you can, nobody else is going to care either.

Actually, it isn't so much that nobody cares, but it's more a factor of some of this illegal junk violating SO MANY laws, that each agency thinks somebody else should investigate and prosecute the crooks - the fakes should be seized by customs. They should be investigated by the feds. They should be hauled into court in states where the bad goods are sold. They should be nailed by authorities overseas. Etc etc etc. So don't assume that if you do nothing, someone else will pick up the ball.

Here endeth the lesson for today.

-Duncan

(Edited for a typo, so I'll add that we really should watch this guy, or someone like him, and when he posts a bunch more of these fakes, we should ALL report his auctions, and come back here and say "Reported". Great fun. Then when ebay gets hit by a class action lawsuit for violating the RICO act, which automatically includes treble damages, they can't claim "they didn't know". Hey, they're prosecuting CHURCHES under the RICO Act, so going after ebay would be a no-brainer; involved in the ongoing sale of counterfeits for financial gain, across state lines, using the postal system. And all documented in ebay's own records. I'm just saying...)

Bacchus2, as I mentioned before the auction goes to ebay.com, not ebay.uk. It's in the US listings, offered for sale in the US, so clearly subject to US laws. Selling worldwide does not provide blanket immunity.

And just because the fakes - which ARE illegal - can be found on other internet sites, that's no reason to give up the fight and allow them to be sold on the biggest venue, ebay.

You do make an excellent point, though, and it can be a real problem. That has to do with vintage fakes, those that are easily recognized and intentionally collected for what they are. The basic problem is how does ebay make a distinction between the harmless, even desirable items, so they can be offered for sale? There is no way to separate those items from the really harmful fakes (there is a huge gray area in the middle) so ebay is pretty much forced into banning them all. It's not really ebay's fault, the blame for that lies squarely on the modern fakers.

Even in the case of the ancients you mention, including old contemporary counterfeits, there is still a major problem - modern unmarked copies, fakes of fakes. So even your example is a treacherous field for collectors.

Bottom line is, going easy on sellers of fakes is definitely not good for the hobby, what's missing from the game are search warrants, seizures, prosecutions in court, and jail time. I just recently said it elsewhere, but as long as ebay thinks that getting kicked off ebay is a severe punishment, the fakers have the upper hand and an easy route to illegal profits.

Coins are part of my hobby, but I'm more into stamps, and for years I helped to track down bad guys in the Stamps category. On a really good day I could find, for example, Asian sellers with new ebay identities who were offering expensive stamps using images "borrowed" from legitimate online offerings, taking the money and disappearing into the Chinese crowd, impossible to find and prosecute them. It was not uncommon for those auctions to involve tens of thousands of dollars, and if lucky those transactions could be reported to ebay and interrupted. On a bad day ebay would say, "perhaps they have permission to sell those stamps" and let the buyers get stiffed.

It would have been easy to give up, but ebay did two important things. 1) they started a Stamp Watch Committee of experts to check reported bad auctions, and 2) they formed an alliance with the APS (the American Philatelic Society in the US) to take part in that committee. That helped.

But more importantly, and very quietly, they started to escrow the payments to these new sellers, making sure buyers actually received their items and posted positive feedback.

What had become an epidemic of bad sellers very quickly turned around, and now sellers using stolen images are essentially gone. Aggressive reporting of bad auctions was a vital part of the process, as was spreading the word online.

Heck, even Jerry Mather, "The Beav" from Leave It to Beaver, went to prison for forging First Day Covers. But it requires a spotlight shining on the perpetrators for action to take place.

-Dunc

I posted:




And Bacchus ignored the first part of what I said: